6/01/2009 @ 6:00PM

Drone Wars

On the first of April, in a tribal area of Pakistan not far from the Afghan border, a small missile screamed through the sky and exploded into a house where a band of suspected Taliban militants were camped. The assumed culprit: a Predator drone aircraft controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency.

To fight its wars this decade, the U.S. has increasingly relied on unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as UAVs or drones. While the military uses UAVs from a variety of contractors for surveillance purposes, the current king of the armed drone makers is a private San Diego firm, General Atomics. Its subsidiary, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, makes the Predator and Reaper drones that comprise the U.S. Air Force’s entire armed UAV fleet, according to an Air Force official.

But the race is on to build the next-generation “hunter-killer” UAV, as combat drones are known in military parlance. And
Northrop Grumman
and
Boeing
are also very much in the game.

“They each have a different capability,” says Scott Winship, who heads Northrop’s next-generation UAV program, speaking about the armed drones being developed by various firms. “Our niche is flying on and off a carrier.”

In 2007, Northrop won a $635.8 million Navy contract to demonstrate a combat UAV that can be used on aircraft carriers thousands of miles out at sea. What it came up with is the X-47B, a Buck Rogers-style plane the size of a strike fighter that can fly as high as 40,000 feet. The planes (there will be two of them) are also designed to be fully autonomous, meaning pilots on the ground won’t fly them, as is the case currently with Predators and Reapers.

From an economic perspective, the benefit of the drones is obvious. They can stay aloft far longer than manned fighter jets, allowing the military to buy fewer planes. If the Navy decides to put UAVs alongside fighter jets on its aircraft carriers, the military will likely train fewer carrier-based pilots.

“All those things add up to a big reduction in operating cost,” says Winship.

Northrop Grumman, which also makes the Global Hawk surveillance UAVs used by the Air Force, envisions that the X-47 will be used for a variety of missions, including long-range strikes, anti-submarine warfare and old-fashioned backup for troops on the ground. But the planes aren’t in the air yet. The company plans the first flights in late 2009, with carrier landings at sea in 2011. The test period runs through 2013.

With it looking likely that the military will come to rely on UAVs, Boeing last year decided to revive a program that was put on hold in 2006, when the Pentagon cut a joint Navy/Air Force/Defense Department project to develop a combat drone. Boeing’s prototype is called Phantom Ray, which it describes as an autonomous “test bed” for technologies like aerial refueling and combat support. Test flights for the wedge-shaped plane begin in late 2010.

Boeing, which has manufactured UAVs for decades, has no buyer for the Phantom Ray and is funding the research itself. After losing the Joint Strike Fighter competition to
Lockheed Martin
and the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System contract to Northrop Grumman’s X-47, pushing forward on drone technology could be key to the company’s future in tactical aircraft.

“The reason we’re doing this, fundamentally, is to make sure the Boeing Company has a core competency in this area,” says Darryl Davis, president of Boeing’s Phantom Works research and development division. “You want to be ahead of the market and not be reacting.”

Should the military want to buy combat UAV like the Phantom Ray from Boeing, the price tag would be about $60 million to $70 million a piece in current dollars, says Davis, adding that this figure would become “dramatically less expensive” as production expands.

Sound pricey? Consider that an F-22 strike fighter costs about $143 million apiece, according to the Air Force. The cost reduction fits in well with the U.S. military’s plans to be more efficient. Foreign governments, particularly smaller countries that have a limited amount of money to spend on military planes, have also expressed an interest in Boeing’s Phantom Ray technology, Davis says.

General Atomics is also developing a space-age-looking combat UAV, the Avenger. Like the planes being developed by Boeing and Northrop Grumman, the Avenger is a jet-powered fighter capable of combat and surveillance missions. Unlike the others, it will be flown by pilots using a stick-and-throttle system on the ground–the same ground-control system the Air Force already employs for the Predator and Reaper UAVs. That will help keep down the price tag. The Avenger is expected to be “a small fraction of the cost of an F-22,” according to General Atomics boss Neal Blue.

In April, General Atomics began its first flight tests of the Avenger, a stealthier drone than the Predator or Reaper. The plane can soar to heights of 60,000 feet and can stay aloft for up to 30 hours at a time. It also has an internal weapons bay and can be outfitted with Hellfire missiles.

General Atomics is taking a bet that it will find a buyer for its newest UAV. According to an Air Force spokeswoman, the Air Force currently has no plans to acquire Avengers. But Blue doesn’t seem concerned that Boeing, Northrop Grumman or anyone else will move in on General Atomics’ territory.

“There is no external threat provided General Atomics continues to innovate and deliver transformational capabilities,” he says via e-mail.